The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning—Part 1

Contributed by Jane Nguyen, Instructional Designer I (CSE)

In the instructional design degree program I’m in, we recently read a piece called “The World is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning.” It’s definitely one of the better Ed-tech and pedagogy articles I’ve read in a long time. I’d like to share some of its ideas with faculty at UHCL and consider how they can be applied in current courses.

One of the key points from the article is that “mass education” and standardized learning content have had limitations over the past two centuries. It’s worked just fine for some, especially those who are highly motivated by external gain (usually financial), such as learners in developing countries. However, for learners in industrialized countries like the U.S., where a minimum of prosperity is almost a given whether one learns or not, we would do well to foster intrinsic motivation as much as possible.

As such, learning needs to be more personalized, much in the way it was hundreds of years ago when the standard way people learned was one-on-one in private tutoring.

Over the next 20-50 years, we can expect an increase in artificial intelligence that will voice direct an individual about his or her personal learning interests, preferences, and needs. But since education can’t wait for technology to catch up to the needs of students now, here are some ideas to personalize learning in your online courses:

Encourage digital note-taking of texts you have your students read AND have them revisit their notes. More importantly, ask them to make sure that more than half of the notes they take on readings are reactions and questions and not just recaps. Too often, students are reading information once and never doing any deep reflection on the reading or on their thoughts about it. For substantial learning to occur, “we need to have repeated exposure to the information, along with some time in between for reflection. We need to give our brains a repeated opportunity to process the information we take in so that it becomes knowledge, understanding, and wisdom” (Anderson, 2011, p. 13).

The future of learning might include a “Learn This” button just like we currently have a “Tweet This” or “Share This” button on social media posts, and students would automatically be prompted with questions about what they just read.

For now, consider personalizing learning in this way. We already use Socratic questioning that usually comes from instructors. Instead (or in addition), have learners self-generate questions to analyze concepts, prod at the depth of knowledge, focus on principles, issues, problems, etc. Any time students read something, let them choose something from the text they want to learn more about and have them generate their own question or questions about those concepts and immediately have to answer them in writing or an audio clip.

Students will naturally choose concepts that most interest them and that they think is most crucial to learn. You might have some students learning more about one idea or line of thought than other students, who are focusing on something else, but the student will have learned based on preference, interest, and judgment of importance. A student who is majoring in healthcare might pick up on part of the article that addresses implications for medicine or those who work in service of the community, whereas a business major might pick up on part of the reading that is focused on how the phenomenon in question has implications for the corporate world and why. Different students care about different aspects of a given subject, and this varies based on many factors aside from college majors. The point is that the learning will be more personalized and thus more interesting for the student. They are more likely to be intrinsically motivated to learn, which makes the experience more personal and effective.

Of course, the article’s explanation of these ideas infuses much more futuristic use of artificial intelligence. I recommend reading it when you have time. It also insists, however, that we can begin to personalize learning even without artificial intelligence by using traditional methods (or with tech tools that are already used, such as digital note-taking, optimized with best pedagogical practices).

In my next installment, I will discuss other ideas from the article about personalizing learning. I realize not all of a given course’s content can be personalized. That’s okay. As long as you are allowing for some personalization where possible and appropriate, you are making strides toward the future of learning and helping to foster intrinsic motivation.

Reference

Anderson, M.H. (2011). The World is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning. The Futurist, January-February 2011, 12-17.